Trump's new border wall will threaten wild animals in an area in which only a few people come by US Mexico border

Donald Trump puts a new part of the border wall in front of him, which will threaten wild animals in a remote area in which many rare animals – but only very few people – roam through.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has invited the private sector company to offer contracts to build almost 40 miles on the border between the USA and Mexico over the non -general south of Tucson, Arizona, one of the biological regions in the USA.

Here, huge rolling grasslands stretch over a high desert that is trapped by robust, isolated mountain ranges in the east and west, which are known as heavenly islands because they rise abruptly and spectacularly from dry flatness.

“This is a crucial wildlife corridor,” said Eamon Harrity, wildlife program manager for the Sky Island Alliance, a non-profit preservation while driving along an unpaved road towards the Santa Cruz River lined with Cottonwood trees.

One nearby Movement -controlled wildlife camera, one of 65 from alliance in this section of the border, where there is a lengthy gap in the barrier, captures thousands of images of wild animals, including bears, bobcats, pronghorns and mountain lions.

“Large predators and other animals move freely through this landscape,” said Harrity when he replaced the batteries of a trail camera, which pointed to the wide open landscape, which would show the border with Mexico on a map. Harrity helps to monitor more than 110 cameras in a wider area for an alliance study that began in 2020 to capture the effects of Trump's barrier on cross -border movements for local wild animals.

“The [movement] Will not happen when the wall is complete, ”he added from this route between the Arizona-Mexico.

This completion will now become a reality. “CBP asks for the construction of 24.7 miles border barrier around the international border monument 102 in the area of ​​the Sonoita Border Patrol Station of Responsibility,” a CBP spokesman told the Guardian in an e -mail and referred to the small stone control or monuments that were traditionally taken along the international line.

A satellite card over the route of the border between Arizona and Mexico, where CBP built a new pedestrian border wall.

Outside of San Rafael Valley, the sections of the border wall, which keep people with 30 feet high steel posts, are only four centimeters apart. As soon as this valley is walled, it will separate a critical wildlife corridor for animals that hike between Mexico and Arizona.

Erick Meza, coordinator of the border country for the Sierra Club Environmental Advocacy Group, said that Walling the Valley was “catastrophic for the environment and the animal world”.

On April 27, the US House of Homeland Security Committee represented its proposed budget and prepared USD $ 46.5 billion to finance new barrier barriers on the almost 2,000 miles long boundary between the USA and Mexico, where the construction of a wall in the first Trump management was a focus on the building and was very annoyed in the first trump administration is removed.

The new advance for more wall comes than not authorized intersections of people who hike through or from Mexico to the USA had fallen quickly last year after Joe Biden postponed the restrictions and had now reached historical levastations. This was found by CBP and trumpeted through the Trump White House with inflammatory language, also when the president spoke of “invasion”.

“Even when the numbers were the highest, people crowded in areas that already had a border wall,” said Meza. “San Rafael Valley never saw these numbers.”

Critics are angry.

“It is an expensive, unnecessary and environmentally friendly catastrophic project,” said Harrity of the Barriere, which can cost up to $ 30 million per mile. “When this wall is complete, it will separate a continent.”

Successful legal challenges for federal actions at the border can be difficult, but the opponents examine their options intensively.

And high metal limits that not only hinder animals, but also cause enormous damage and disorders in construction and patrols are not the only concern for wildlife representatives. Trump has also announced a plan to continue using the military and take over large parts of public areas along the border.

A presidential memorandum in April led the transfer of a 60-foot strip of the federal government on the border in California, Arizona and New Mexico, known as Roosevelt Reserve, US military control.

This could mean new military bases and staging areas that, as shown in Texas, create environmental chaos.

Myles Trapages, Borderlands Director of the Wildland Network, is concerned that large military facilities could be built in the region, which further improves the human footprint of an already militarized border.

“It's an invasion,” said Trapages. “An invasion of our public areas.”

Mark Nevitt, a professor of legal school at Emory University School of Law, said [such as] “Invasion” and “under attack”, which seems to expand the role of the military in enforcing immigration. “He also fears that Pentagon funds will be transferred to land in more wall buildings in order to be shown as” national defense areas “.

Noah Schramm, border policy strategist of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, described it as “uniquely alarming

In Arizona, 63% of the border have already been sealed, and the remaining open sections are of crucial importance for wild animals, with the San Rafael -Valley being one of the last intact expansion of Sonora desert grass in the state. The rough mountains of Huachuca and Patagonia in the region, part of the Sky Island range, serve as steps through a hard desert by offering a number of habitats, food sources and water for animals.

“The biodiversity here is incredible,” said Meza from the Sierra Club. In addition to bears, mountain lions and wolves, there are subtropical species such as the wild pig-like spear and rare large cat ocelots and jaguars with natural areas of hundreds of kilometers between countries looking for food, water and friends.

“This is the heart of all these different ecosystems,” added Meza.

When Harrity of the Sky Island Alliance drove his smashed red pick -up through the wilderness, he passed on a lonely pronghorn, the strange, antelop -like creature, which is the fastest country mammal in America. The San Rafael Valley entered the third year of a severe drought, he said.

“If it rains, it can look like Scotland,” he said. In dry times like now, the valley looks more like the African savannah, with rolling hills of local grasses flying out in soft yellow, oranges and rust. “A study in Browns,” he added, jumping towards the only visible green – cotton trees that line the Santa Cruz River.

Harrity said when the climate crisis tightens the drought in the southwest, wild animals in the border region must continue to search for food and water. In 2021, a Mexican gray wolf, who was known as Mr. Goodbar, drove 23 miles along the border wall in search of a place where they could cross to Mexico. After days he finally gave up and returned to the Gila Wilderness Area in New Mexico.

“The last thing we should do now is to avert corridors and drain connectivity,” said Harrity.

A spear runner can be seen on a trail cam that tries to squeeze through part of the existing border wall in 2023.

The Santa Cruz River is an important corridor for animal migration that meanders to Mexico and back to Arizona. “The river is now walled on both legs of its trip,” said Harrity. A nearby wildlife camera recently recorded a video of a mountain lion with its price, a dead coyot, to Mexico.

The valley is almost free of people. And there is no treacherous signs of a migration in the border areas: crack clothes on bushes, thrown away backpacks and empty water bottles. In five years, a camera of the river has never recorded a picture of a migrant that will pass to the United States, although it is one of the few parts of the valley with shadows and water.

On a hill over the river, an agent in a white and green border patrol -SUV watched.

Then in New Mexico, in the east, near the small town of Columbus, Trapages from the Wildlands Network drew from a hill that was lightened by red-blooded octillo plants on the longest-related section of the border wall in the USA. Eighty miles of three -story posts, the sand dunes and volcanic mounds cut like a huge snake to El Paso, Texas.

When the spring wind recorded, the steel columns began to hall end. “When the wind really gets going, it sounds like Tuvan-Throat singer,” said Trapages of the Central Asian singers, who can also produce a low vocal rumbling and a high whistle.

Many of the trail cameras of the Wildland Network are focused on “building anomalies”, said Trapages, where the posts are incorrectly five or six inches instead of the usual four. These additional 2in do not affect a crossroads, but can at least let animals such as spears and coyotes go through it. This subtle difference would also reduce the number of posts required for the construction of the extremely expensive border wall. “These are probably 30 million US dollars there,” said Trapages, showing when he indicated an abandoned construction area from the former Trump administration, which contained thousands of steel columns, which, like the children's toys, stacked the children.

Other hiking cameras are placed near open locks, which arises from a lawsuit from 2023 in which the border patrol is obliged to open intermittent gates in the barrier to consist of larger animals.

“This camera has recorded over 1,000 videos and we have never seen a person who crosses them,” said Trapages. It shows along a sandy laundry with the paws of rabbits, coyotes and badger. Of the eight cameras that were examined on the border between Mexico during a long excursion, only one evidence of migrants had recorded.

But in a 2024 study by the Wildland Network and the Sky Islands Alliance, movement-activated cameras along 100 miles of walls The limit showed an 86% decrease in animal crossings and a 100% reduction in animals such as wolves, bears, pronghorns and jaguar.

“The Trump government would rather achieve cheap political points and a cheap heading by FOX News than to solve a problem. Instead of waste the dollars of taxpayers, undermining the military willingness and jeopardizing the security of American families, Trump and [Elon] Musk should focus on actually repairing our broken immigration system, ”said Martin Heinrich, US Senator for New Mexico and Democrat.

“New Mexicans who live on the border want actual solutions, e.g.

Back in San Rafael Valley, Trapages noticed that the musical Oklahoma musical over all parts of the original film from 1955! were filmed in this beautiful place.

“It will be a tragedy to see a flawless grassland … turned into a military zone,” he said.

A mountain lion cannot pass a section of the border wall in November.